Finally, a better base for your Caesar

Where has this tomato-clam mix been all this time?

If you’re Canadian, there’s a good chance you’ve got Mott’s Clamato running through your veins. Clamato, as everyone knows, is the beloved briny base of the Caesar, a drink invented by Walter Chell of Calgary in 1969.

Well, get ready folks; it’s time for a transfusion.

Meet Walter Caesar Mix, a craft tomato-clam cocktail made without a lot of what goes in to the reigning Caesar mix: namely, high fructose corn syrup, food colouring and MSG. What you will taste is a veritable cornucopia of all-natural ingredients including top quality vine-ripened tomatoes, grated horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, and clam juice freshly squeezed (in a sense) from the North Atlantic itself.

This is a grown up Caesar mix. It’s the mix that everyone notices when it walks into the room. It’s the lion to the lamb. This mix has teeth.

Walter’s is a recipe developed by Vancouverites and lifelong friends, Aaron Harowitz and Zack Silverman. The product launched in 2013 and at last count, is finding shelf space in more than 600 retailers, bars and restaurants nationwide.

Who is “Walter”? The name was chosen to pay homage not only to Mr. Chell, creator of the legendary cocktail, but to the many men of Walter fame: Whitman, Cronkite, Matthau, even Walter Gretzky, who, one could say, invented another Canadian legend, the Great One himself, Number 99.

This Caesar mix is available in two formats: mildly-spiced, for Sunday brunches with those sweater-draped neighbours; and well-spiced, for when you’re feeling a little more “leather-chaps and yeehaw” because, pardner, that last one has got a whole lotta attitude up in there.

Be it mild or well-spiced, both varieties come in two sizes: 725 ml for retailers and 946 ml for the food and hospitality industry. And the containers? All glass. That’s class, because Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is so yesterday.

Now you know. Find a bottle of Walter Caesar Mix and turn over a new maple leaf. It’s Canadian, eh.